State of Mind

The Premise
(100% Spoiler-Free Review)
State Of Mind (SoM) is a futuristic narrative adventure set in Berlin, 2048. Players impersonate Richard Nolan, a journalist that through his work, tries to oppose humanity's increasing dependency from machines and artificial elements in everyday life. After a grievous accident, the protagonist starts to doubt his own perception of reality and memories - a factor that will eventually bring him to uncover something unimaginable.
Quick Sum-Up
🟩 The Pros
🟥 The Cons
1. Excellent world-building, rich in details and nuances.
2. Articulate story that delves into morally complex themes.
3. Solid development of characters throughout the story.
4. Interesting, varied puzzles and minigames.
1. Narration pacing is dull and slow.
2. Character models can look very disturbing.
3. Low amount of meaningful branching choices.
🟨 Bugs & Other Issues
🔧 PC Specs
- Clunky character control system.
- Ryzen 3900X
- RTX 2080Ti
- 32GB RAM
- NvME SSD
- 1440p Display
In-Depth Analysis
Pros
1.
Aside from uniquely-styled visuals, SoM depicts a realistic state of future world politics and society, heavily influenced by technology's rampant evolution. Augmented reality, domestic robots and an almost Orwellian level of surveillance are commonplace - relations between East and West blocs of the world are at an all-time low.
2.
This title has transhumanism as main theme, using Richard and his aversion to technology as a medium to raise moral doubts into the player, such as: what does truly define an individual, the existence of souls and more high-profile existential subjects. The game never "answers" these inquiries directly, leaves them open to interpretation.
3.
The personalities of Richard and all the major secondary characters encompassing his life, do evolve in a tangible manner as the plot unfolds. As more discoveries are made and certainties are broken, the true nature of people emerges, as it should be. Each of them is well defined and consistent from start to end, without major flaws.
4.
To break pacing and introduce novelty, SoM uses a good variety of puzzles and minigames ranging from hacking to information gathering, practical problem-solving and even some shooting. Some of these are realized in a "point and click" style where one has to find the correct item combination to move forward, while others are more unique.
Cons
1.
Narrative-wise, SoM can really become a drag, especially in the first half. An excessive quantity of inconsequential activities and dialogues is present, while also quite too much backtracking. Nothing interesting happens for extended periods of time: this disrupts the pacing and makes following the story a dull chore, even if it has a good premise.
2.
While the low-poly style is excellent and depicting environments, it can make characters look straight out grotesque more than a few times. The protagonist and some are alright, others aren't, with low-poly faces being "distorted" in very bizarre ways in the attempt to emulate the nuances of a human face. This can be immersion-breaking.
3.
Despite having diverse reaction options in dialogues, what Richard does or say rarely has greater consequences in the story, or in his relationship to the characters around him. Sometimes they do, but it's an exception and not the rule. Choices are as well limited and ultimately lead to the same situations, with only the illusion of a greater complexity.
Gameplay Breakdown
Gameplay is divided into Exploration, Dialogues, Puzzles and Minigames.
Exploration
Is performed on foot, across the streets of Berlin and even in virtual reality at times. Each environment is not very large and linear in design, with secondary areas being few, often just housing some collectible or minor interaction. SoM focuses more on density than quantity of locations, so expect to have different things to do in the same places multiple times. To move between settings, realistic travel means such as trains or cabs can be used - but only at certain times.
The augmented reality interface can provide info on many elements of each environment, interactions are plentiful.
Dialogues
During his adventure, Richard will be able to directly speak or video-call his contacts to trigger main quest-related dialogues but also plenty of secondary ones, that however have no consequences. The protagonist can choose how to react most of the times, and while this influences the behavior of a few characters - most will just end up the same way regardless. It's not uncommon for this genre to provide the "illusion of choice", yet it remains an unsatisfying premise.
Puzzles
Are generally about finding the correct item, or combination of objects, needed to progress. At times these can also be a sequence of dialogues relayed by Richard from one NPC to another. Some other times enigmas take a more unique turn, proposing logic-based obstacles such as activating switches in the correct order or navigating a virtual maze. These puzzles are a good diversion, provide a needed break from the main gameplay loop that however remains dull overall, due to global pacing.
Minigames
Are generally about operating machinery or controlling mechanical devices, these can range from sabotaged police drones to assmebly machines and more. During these sequences, a more action mood is taken in general, with proper enemies appearing at times, even. Such situations are however, few and far between, and not particularly challenging either, as expected from this genre.
The Judgment: Good
Complete Ratings List here
It took me around 10 hours to complete State of Mind, taking time to explore each are carefully as well. Replay value is minimal as there aren't many significant choices to try out. For the current price of 30€ and despite having good quality, i'd still suggest waiting for a sale (25-30%+) before buying.
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Daedalic
They are a Hamburg-based video game developer studio who have been active for almost 15 years. Their point-and-click adventure games, such as the Deponia series, are well-known by many. I'm looking forward to their Gollum game (slated for next year) which is probably a big step for such a studio. State of Mind is their first product I laid my hands on just recently.
Story
Welcome to 2048 Berlin! A world increasingly populated by machines; machines that help us in our everyday lives including android assistants that can serve as tutors or be the maid in a household. Not for Richard Nolan, though, our protagonist and journalist who despises all. Following a car accident (shown in the intro) and the tutorial level in the hospital Richard returns home only to find it empty without his wife and kid. Much to this annoyance the family now has its own android. Disregarding anything the robot says Richard sets out to find his loves ones.
Cyberpunk
The setting is great! I love the genre and it reminded me of Deus Ex a couple of times. You know, a world with some great technological inventions, yet, it isn't as utopistic as one would believe. Fans of the Witcher series will immediately accept Richard as he is voiced by none other but Doug Cockle, our very own Geralt of Rivia.
Later on we are introduced to Adam Nolan. His apartment is elsewhere but its layout is exactly the same as that of Richard. The question is why. He has his child with him but he needs to be taken to the hospital regularly and his wife is also absent due to work. What is shown as dark and foreboding in Richard's world it is perfectly paralleled by Adam's location: the colours are vivid and everybody seems to be happy. Even the office buildings (their place of work) seem to oppose one another: while Richard is given the sack Adam receives a promotion (yet, upon entry he doesn't even know the girl's name who has just given him a compliment).
Gameplay
We control Richard and Adam from the 3rd person in an extremely linear way. While almost everything in the world can be scanned and interacted with to a certain degree it is really just one option we have to make the story progress. There are several locations but these are relatively small and there are many we return to. Things get a little bit more interesting when the two protagonists meet and the holo pin board in their study allows us to switch between them on the go.
There is no combat or QTE sequence here. It is impossible to fail the game and in case you got stuck in a new location remember to go through your contacts as you might have missed a message or a call from someone. I found the low-poly art very appealing and making progress throughout the chapters felt like watching a TV series. Too bad that I binge-watched it - the writing is not the strongest side of the game and as it slows down after a couple of chapters you have to have patience to get that extra momentum to be able to proceed.
Summary
State of Mind is a good game. Not a great one but an interesting one indeed. Its narrative is somewhat mediocre but the setting (and the music!) is superb. We also get two very satisfying endings. Overall, a walkthrough takes roughly 9 hours to complete which is decent. I didn't feel like jumping in once more, though, so for the missing 'cheevos I went with the chapter selection.

State of Mind won’t be for everyone but it is fantastic when it sticks to it’s strengths. It has a very good story; good graphics; a great world and great characters. It’s puzzles are where it falls short. Daedalic Entertainment is know for it’s 2D Point and Click games but this is the first third person game I have seen them do so maybe it just couldn’t make it’s puzzles translate over genres. Luckily the majority of the puzzles aren’t bad or even difficult. It has 2 puzzles I disliked but they weren’t difficult so much as they were tedious. The story as mentioned was one of the strong points as you try to piece together your past in order to find your family. One thing I will say is few games have made me dislike the main character as much of State of Mind made me dislike Richard Nolan. I have played as characters that cut old ladies throats for a few coins and I found more I liked about them then I did Richard. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, if it was then bravo I say. He was just a child like man who spends more time looking for his family then he asks why he is doing it or if he even deserves them. He treats his friends poorly; never accepts blame; is just an all around dbag. The only times he showed a little humility or kindness was the few times I was allowed to choose a dialogue choice that gave that to him. Again, if intentional then that is well done. The dialogue is well done and the choices at least give me the feeling of having decent control over most of the story. The characters were interesting and made me want to get to know them better. Lydia was not only my favourite but had a very memorable scene where you take control of her as a VR cam-girl for a scene. It was genuinely creepy like few other scenes in games. The graphics has a great style to them that was like a mishmash of cell shaded graphics and realism. The people and clothing were mainly cell shaded but the world detail was mainly in a realistic style and it made for an interesting blend. The world detail was very good as homes felt lived in and the city felt alive usually. In particular the rain soaked sidewalks of Queens New York was fantastic. The voice acting was also well done.
I played State of Mind on Linux. It never crashed on me. I used version 1.2 of the game. It did have one glitch one time where an NPC blocked me into a desk and I couldn’t move away. I had to reload the save and stand further from her when I spoke to her. Another issue was the audio at points got low for a few seconds and then went back to normal. This was always in just one ear of my headphones. It only happened a few times throughout but is an issue anyway. The game uses the Unreal engine. It has a 60 FPS lock that can’t be changed. Alt-Tab worked without issue. There are 4 settings for AA; a Vsync toggle and 4 other graphics options. The performance is usually great sticking to 60 FPS but there are points where I experienced drops in frame rate for 1-2 seconds. It could drop to anywhere from the 20’s to 4 FPS. This was random and brief. I noticed the GPU usage was frequently all over the place going from 99 to 60 to 0 to 4, etc. The game uses OpenGL. The game uses an auto save system but they’re pretty frequent.
Disk Space Used: 19.56 GB
GPU Usage: 0-99 %
VRAM Usage: 1.23-1.89 GB
RAM Usage: 3.2-6.3 GB
Frame Rate: 4-60 FPS
Settings Used: All Epic; motion blur and Vsync off @ 1920x1080
I paid $42.18 CAD for this and feel it is worth every penny. I finished it in 9 hours and 48 minutes. Some people will probably say that there is not enough “game play” to State of Mind but I find that the story is so strong I don’t mind plus I like games in this genre anyway. There are light puzzles throughout but no combat or action. The dialogue and choices are the main draw. If you enjoy walking simulators or story driven games in general there is a lot here for you. If you enjoy puzzles mainly then you still may like it.
My Score: 9/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 5700 XT 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 20.0.4 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 19.0.2 | Mate 1.24 | Kernel 5.6.3-2-MANJARO

An amazing story with good suspense and thrill /
This game will make a lot of people play it in one go.
Music is really good along with voice acting.
Fine graphics and amazing environment.
F for those characters.
Puzzles aren't bad.
Needs better controls and movement

63 / 100
A slow burning yet fascinating story that I found hindered by the chop-n-change nature of the storytelling. First half of the game was hard to follow, and was a struggle to motivate myself to continue playing at times. Once over that hump though, State of Mind came home strong leaving me thinking of the implications of my choices well after I pressed exit.
+ Feels Surreal, Dreamlike.
+ Voice acting is high quality & emotive.
+ Low-Poly graphical style was off-putting at first, but does give the game a unique feel.
+ Some great camera work puts you into the space & draws out details in the scene.
+ Rewarding story arcs.
- No real gameplay challenges outside of navigating the UI. Bit hollow.
- Worlds/Environments created look good, but lack any interaction or vibrancy.
- Gameplay in general feels padded out, going over same areas (like the apartment).
- Needed tighter narrative focus to help understand character motivations earlier.
- Poor engine performance in certain scenes (sub 30 frames on 1080TI).
- No manual save system. Had to redo several sections several times as a result.
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I have mixed feelings about State of Mind. However, I would recommend it with a few reservations.
On the positive side, the story is actually pretty good. I'd liken it to a mix of iRobot, Deus Ex, and Black Mirror all wrapped up into one. So for me (loving all of those), the story was a big win. The music, characters, and overall thematic elements are fantastic. Perhaps a bit cliche, but well done none-the-less.
With that said, there are two major downsides. First, this isn't really a "game", but rather more of an interactive story. Nothing wrong with that, but I was actually expecting a puzzle style game like other games from Daedelic, so it was a slight surprise. The controls are pretty bad as well, reminding me of a 90s style game.
But the biggest downside to State of Mind is its incredibly slow start. It BARELY kept my interest for the first 5 hours of so. That's saying a lot for me, since I really don't mind slower games, tv, or movies. But this was taking it to the next level in terms of dragging on the introduction to the characters. This aspect may be a deal breaker for many people, and based off of the achievement percentage that I saw, not many people have actually finished the game.
At any rate, if you like distopian sci-fi stories and aren't expecting much from the gameplay, State of Mind is a pretty good relaxing story that becomes very engaging once you have gotten past the arduous introduction.
(as a side note, my game time is not indicative of the time it takes to complete the game. I have a tendency to pause games for hours or even days at a time)

This game is an exciting futuristic game that sinks into humanism. This game explores the themes of separation, non-disintegration and reconnection, in a world torn between a dual material reality of fashion and a virtual future of the utopia. The story of the game is really great, but the rest is really awful. 7/5 Score was really good for this game.